October 28, 2005
On a certain day in the year 624 CE, about eighteen months after his migration to Madinah, the Prophet of Islam was sitting in his Mosque with his Companions. Some of those who had gathered on that day in the recently built Mosque, had emigrated from their beloved Makkah, leaving behind their property and possessions, others had lived in that city between the two lava tracks for generations, but had never observed the month of Ramadan as the month of fasting. They were all citizens of a theocratic state which had a written constitution, Mithaq al-Madinah, a multi-racial, multi-religious population consisting of Muslims, Jews, ascetics, agnostics, even non-believers. There was no regular army, no hospitals, no state bureaucracy, but there was one madrassah-school located in the Masjid. This newly established state was an experiment in state-craft that had no parallel in human history, not because a Prophet was its head—for Prophets had led states before—but because of the manner in which this state had come into existence.
Almost three years ago, 73 men and 2 women from the Oasis of Yathrib, as Madinah was then called, had pledged that if the Prophet moved to their city, they would protect him as they protected their children. Following this pledge at a remote place called Aqabah, Muslims of Makkah had emigrated to the Oasis and at the end of this process of migration, the Prophet himself had come. His arrival marked the beginning of the emergence of a theocratic state that would eventually encompass the entire Middle East and large parts of Asia and Africa. But more important than the vast geographical region which the state would acquire, is the way in which it was established.
This Islamic state came into existence in a manner unlike any other state that has ever come into existence and the process that created it remains the only valid mode of establishing an Islamic state anywhere in the world. This process was rooted in an unearthly Book, the Qur’an. It derived its political ideology, social, economic, and military strategies from a Book which was not even complete yet, but which was being revealed gradually, simultaneous with the emergence of the new state. As opposed to other books in our possession, this Book was neither poetry nor prose, neither philosophy nor history, but it contained a message that required immediate action and immediate transformation of the way a person lived. Its message was simple enough: there is but only One Creator Who has created the cosmos in which human beings live on one of the planets. This creation is for a fixed duration and for a purpose. At the end of this fixed duration, all existent things will perish. Then each and every human being will be resurrected and held accountable for what he or she did in the duration granted for his or her residence on planet earth. This accountability will then lead to an ever-lasting life in one of the two abodes the Creator has prepared: a Paradise with its delights and bounties and a Hell with its fire and tortures.
The Book revealed a belief system, a boundary within which human lives were to be lived, and directives for personal as well as collective social behavior ranging from economic transactions to visitation. More importantly, this Book was not merely words, when it first appeared on earth, it immediately became a living Book, in letter and spirit by at least one man on earth, and his every action was as if an embodiment of the Book. His noble conduct was not unknown to his fellow citizens who called him al-Amin, the trustworthy one. But his example was being followed by only a very small number of men and women. Most residents of Makkah ridiculed him. They called him a liar, a poet, a mad man, a sorcerer, and a dangerous magician. For thirteen long years, he lived in his native Makkah, calling men and women to the Message, but succeeded in attracting less than a five hundred human beings. Then, he was directed to leave his native city and move to the Oasis of Yathrib from where 73 men and 2 women had come to pledge themselves to his Message.
Yathrib became Madinah with his migration and on that day, about eighteen months after his arrival in the city, he sat among his Companions and told them that they had been commanded to fast for a whole month. Ramadan, the month of fasting, was already in their calendar but now it became a blessed month, a month in which the Qur’an was sent down.
When Ramadan arrived, and believers in Madinah began their first month of fasting, they had something other than hunger and thirst to contend with: an army of 1000 men had arrived from Makkah to crush the nascent state in the making. By all accounts, the battle that was fought on the 17th day of Ramadan of that year was a small battle, lasting for only a few hours, leaving behind 14 men dead on one side and 70 on the other. There was no collateral damage; no carpet bombing of cities, no sirens, no cruise missiles. All that happened on that day at Badr was an encounter between 313 men, who believed in the Message brought to them by the Prophet, and 1000 other men who did not.
The Battle of Badr, as the encounter was subsequently called, quickened the pace of formation of the first Islamic state in Madinah, but it did not change its foundation which was already well-established. It is this foundation and the process through which it emerged that provide us insights into the procedure for establishing an Islamic state in our own times. Unlike the popularly held images of bearded men with blood-shot eyes, brandishing their guns, hurtling accusations of Kufr, insisting that veils must be put on women’s faces and measuring the length of men’s beards, the real process through which an Islamic state can be established in the twenty-first century brings an entirely different set of images to mind. These images arise out of a process of transformation that changes hearts and lives quietly, reorienting them toward the Creator, leading to the formation of a rule of the land in which He is recognized as the Supreme Ruler--the state that emerges through this process is called a theocratic state.
(To be Continued)
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